Browse Articles

More understanding of demand-side mitigation is needed for overall emissions reductions. Now, a study evaluates mitigation potential based on a cost–benefit approach, but gaps remain to fully leverage demand-side mitigation to achieve effective climate policies.

The authors reveal distinct trends in surface and subsurface phytoplankton dynamics, highlighting the need for subsurface monitoring. Whereas subsurface phytoplankton respond to recent warming with biomass increases, surface phytoplankton show altered carbon-to-chlorophyll ratios but minimal biomass change.

Demand-side mitigation solutions are seen as an essential part for climate actions, yet their adoption is still lower than expected. Cost–benefit analysis shows that the main barriers lie in the non-pecuniary costs of behaviour switching, and highlights opportunities for targeted policy intervention.

Carbon capture and storage is a key component of mitigation scenarios, yet its feasibility is debated. An analysis based on historical trends in policy-driven technologies, current plans and their failure rates shows that a number of 2 °C pathways are feasible, but most 1.5 °C pathways are not.

Tropical aboveground carbon is a crucial yet complex component of the terrestrial carbon budget. Here, remote observations reveal annual losses (from fire emissions and forest disturbances) and post-loss recovery of tropical aboveground carbon for 2010–2020, which overall resulted in tropical lands being a moderate carbon sink.

Declining youth mental health has been labelled a global crisis. Although raging wars are most emotionally salient, ecological crises such as climate change are more costly for the psychological health of young people.

Ice melt from Antarctica is accelerating. Now, a study shows that more realistic treatment of how Earth’s mantle rebounds as Antarctic glaciers retreat can lower projections of mass loss and the associated sea-level rise.

The Filchner–Ronne and Ross ice shelves are two of the largest in Antarctica. Here the authors show their vulnerability to warming ocean conditions, where a transition to warmer waters in the ice shelf cavities could lead to accelerated ice loss and grounding line retreat.

The authors use 12 years of broadscale survey data across 838 temperate and tropical coastal sites to investigate shifts in marine taxa range edges at the community level. They show that while some species respond rapidly to change, evidence for mass poleward migration is limited.

Foreign investments in recent years drive the expansion of fossil fuel electricity generation in emerging economies, yet necessary quantification still lacks. This Article shows how overseas coal-fired power plants could drive future trajectories of CO₂ emissions in host countries.

Lake surface water temperatures have increased over recent decades, mainly driven by atmospheric conditions. Here the authors demonstrate that heat events drive a disproportionately large part of this lake surface warming and increases in lake heatwaves.

The authors analyse data from 272 Chinese cities, projecting that compound heatwaves will cause higher burdens for all major cardiopulmonary diseases than daytime or nighttime heatwaves, especially under scenarios with higher emissions and ageing and in areas with high summer temperature variability.

The authors resurvey data from the present, late 1960s and late 1990s to understand the evolution of European Drosophila fly populations. They show that genetic changes in temperate regions have accelerated in line with warming and come from pre-existing rather than new variation.

The energy used to heat or cool buildings does not only contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but also to other direct forms of heat exchange between buildings and their environment. A study now quantifies the feedback between buildings and their surrounding temperatures, yielding more reliable estimates of the contribution of heating and cooling to local and global warming and better estimates of regional energy demands.

Climate change affects the energy demand for heating and cooling in cities, which in turn leads to additional urban warming. Here, the authors show that when including such two-way biophysical feedbacks, the cooling (heating) energy demand more than doubles (is halved) under high emissions.

Tropical aboveground biomass carbon is a crucial, yet complex, component of the terrestrial C budget. Here remote observations demonstrate that fire emissions and post-fire recovery in non-forested African biomes dominate the interannual variability of aboveground biomass carbon, which acts as a moderate net C sink.

The authors consider environmental niche models for the current and future distribution of fishing fleets and gear from 82 countries. Despite overall redistribution of fleets to the poles, they show that most nations—particularly tropical ones—may struggle to track expected fish stock shifts.

Existing studies show carbon footprint inequality between and within countries, but awareness of this inequality is unclear. This study finds widespread underestimation of carbon footprint inequality and its associations with climate policy support and perceived fairness.

Healthcare emissions negatively affect the environment and health, posing ethical questions between health and environmental impacts. A focus group study in US health systems revealed a willingness to make environmentally informed health decisions and identified barriers to making such decisions.